Into the Silent Night
by purplegirl761
Summary: After thousands of years, Lapis Lazuli is about to experience her first Christmas. . . with plenty of help from Dr. Drakken, of course. Twelve vignettes for the holiday season, to be posted until Christmas Eve.
1. Stars

**~Hi, everybody! I've had the idea for a Drakkis Christmas story knocking around in my head since last year, and I'm so glad to have finally gotten around to it. I'm a little late to do the "12 days of Christmas," so I'm cheating by posting the first four vignettes together.**

 **Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season.**

 **NOTES: Title taken from a For King & Country song. References to the original Christmas story.~**

When Lapis Lazuli lands on what she's learned is called a _sidewalk_ – scratchy under her bare feet – Dr. Drakken greets her with, "Evening, milady. You just flew in from Beach City…and boy, are you wings tired!"

This is followed by peals of laughter.

As usual, Lapis doesn't quite understand his humor, and yet the joy playing all over his face is contagious. She honors Drakken's outstretched hands with a squeeze. When he pulls them back, they twitch at his sides, pantomiming rubbing invisible surfaces.

"Lapis…you're still in that no-belly shirt?" He wedges his fingers over his own midriff, spreads them apart. "And barefoot?" Drakken's words shiver with the clouds of breath puffing from his mouth. Humans expel them when they are cold, she's heard. "Aren't you _freezing_?"

Startled, she glances down at her legs, half-expecting them to be iced over as if touched by Sapphire. They aren't , so she shakes her head. "No," she says.

Half of Drakken's furrow eyebrow slides upward. "Is that a Gem thing?"

"Yes." Although Lapis can feel the temperature has dropped to a chill colder than any Beach City has ever seen, the slithers of cold around her elbows and knees, flicking at the tips of her nose, aren't uncomfortable. It still surprises her, occasionally, how impacted the humans are by the environment around them; surprises and worries her.

Drakken's "heh!" forces out another wisp of whitish air that hangs between them. "Good luck convincing Mother of that!" he says. "She'll be all _over_ you, demanding you cover up! And you'd better play along if you want to stay at her house."

He raises his hand as though to slap his thigh – something else he does when he is delighted – but instead curls his fingers around hers and pulls her across the sidewalk. Unexpectedly rough in texture, like solidified sand, it runs parallel to the road and is apparently free from modern human vehicles.

The houses are more plentiful here than in Beach City, more widely spaced and set low to the ground, grown in crystals that are more square. Tall poles stand at every corner, throwing off circles of light that would be overwhelming if they didn't comfortingly fuzz at the borders.

Dr. Drakken, in the blue coat puffed out to several times his own body's width and the knitted hat pulled down over his forehead, suddenly skids to a stop once they pass the first pole of light. "Oh, Lapis!" he cries. "Look!"

His hand shields his eyes, though from what she's not certain, since the sun shifted its attention to the other side of the Earth quite a while ago. She follows the tilt of his head upward, toward the brilliant black sky, stark and studded with stars – stars and planets – without the afterglow of artificial light to drown it out.

Lapis finds Homeworld right away. It looks just as it always did – round and luminous, so beautiful, too far away.

"Aren't these stars _glorious_?" Drakken asks.

His voice is full of wonder, curiosity, even. His knowledge of open space is extensive, for a human, but he has never known what it is like to float mere meters from a star and watch it burn.

These are all still very new.

"It is pretty," Lapis says. She still misses her first home; his grin is making it easier.

Peridot attempted to throw her arms around Lapis when she left the barn, which Lapis fended off with a soft squeeze of Peridot's tiny hand. "I'll be back home soon," she told Peridot.

For now, though, she is off to see Dr. Drakken, and he will demonstrate how to eat different varieties of food; and he will pick at the skin in his ears; and he will fall, at night, into innocent slumber; and he will otherwise be a fascinating, bizarre, winsome human.

"Some people say they see the Christmas Star reappear around this time of year," Drakken says, still studying the spangled sky. "But it's usually just Venus."

This makes sense – Venus is the most reflective planet in the Crystal System. It's the reference to this _Christmas Star_ that laps its questions along Lapis's banks. But before she can ask them, Drakken turns to her and says, "Lovely place, Venus. You ever been there?"

Lapis shakes her head. "No. It was ruled out as a colony long before I was made. It's too hot – everything we tried to inject there just shriveled up."

"Ew." Drakken wrinkles his small nose and beckons her merrily ahead toward his spotted house, nearly falling headlong over the white slats of his fence in the process. Small red bulbs ride around the outline of the house, shining like warning lights – and yet they are a beacon of welcome. The lit room through the window looks wide and comfortable against the crisp, chilled night.

Lapis looks up at the stars again and releases a fraction of a sigh. It feels as though a string, thin as Drakken's fingers, draws along her back – and is then tenderly, wistfully snipped away.


	2. Wise Men

"So the Christmas Star was what led the Wise Men straight to Bethlehem. It told them the rumors were true – well, it didn't _tell_ them – it never _spoke_ – but, poetically speaking…"

Dr. Drakken trails off, suspecting he is mangling the story. Lapis's bunched eyebrows cement that theory.

He lets himself sag in the middle for a nanosecond and then restarts. "So, the Wise Men – I think you'd like these guys – they'd built their whole lives around studying stars. They were very smart and very rich and very…"

"Elite?" Lapis supplies. Her knees are in their familiar peak, her pixie chin resting atop them, and she seems to sparkle with fairy dust.

"Yes!" Drakken snaps his fingers gratefully. "Anyway, there had been rumors around the world for a while now that a great King was going to be born – and he would be greater than any ruler who had ever lived…or ever would live."

Drakken hears his voice hedge. It was an opening that he once thought _he_ should be the one to fill, and to prod at it still feels a little raw.

"Some of the rumors said," Drakken says, after a moment to collect himself, "that there would be a sign in the heavens when that King was born. The Wise Men were waiting for it – and then one night, this enormous star showed up in the sky – out of nowhere! – and they knew that now was the time." He rubs his hands together, because he has not had the honor of telling this story to someone who's never heard it before. "They hopped on their camels – you know what camels are, right?"

A nod.

"Splendid! They followed the Star…it was kind of like those little dots on the map at the mall telling you where you need to be."

"I know how star-maps work, Drakken." Lapis giggles slightly, reminding him of the shake of sleigh bells. "My people invented them."

Drakken makes a face, but he can't help chuckling a little, too. It is hard not to amidst the twinkle lights spiraling around the ceiling fan (one of his taller henchmen helped with that) and, of course, his present company.

"All right, then, Miss Smarty Boots," Drakken says, "the Three Wise Men brought gifts to Jesus. Gold, frankincense, and…uhh….figgy pudding. No – wait – that's not right."

He presses his fingertips to his temples and commands the thoughts to circle in the center of his brain. They swirl with every Christmas carol he knows, most unhelpfully. It is as if he has to chisel the answer out of a cavern wall . . . it starts with an _M_ , doesn't it? And is relatively short? It isn't _mold_ …

"Myrrh!" Drakken finally crows. "Gold, frankincense, and _myrrh_!"

"Oh." Lapis rests her head against the arm of his Thinking Chair and rolls her irises up to him. "Weird gifts for a baby."

"I know, right? But they were great honors for a king." Drakken irons out his posture, muscles straightening; for all his lofty goals, he never quite perfected a regal posture. "And it's very important to know that the Wise Men weren't the only people God invited. They weren't even the first. First were a group of shepherds. And maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, but –"

"Are you kidding?" Lapis bursts out – well, a burst by Lapis's standards, which is still quiet for anyone else. "Shepherds were the lowest of the low. There wasn't _any_ pride in being a shepherd."

"Oh. Right." Drakken forgets sometimes that she was here on Earth, so many thousands of years ago, and in this respect she probably understands better than he does.

"So…he invited the Elite _and_ the Pearls?" Lapis asks.

Drakken can almost see an incandescent bulb lighting over her head, and he nods. "And he didn't just send a secondhand star to the shepherds, either. They got a full-fledged _angel_ straight from heaven! And once they'd calmed down enough to listen, the angel told them he had great news for them – the Savior had been born! They would find him in Bethlehem, wrapped in cloth and lying in a bed of hay."

Lapis shivers at those last six words, but her regard doesn't waver.

"It was a miracle that Jesus was even born in the first place," Drakken says, and halfway through the sentence he feels his cheeks heat and wonders how, exactly, he is to explain this to a Gem. "Because his mother was…an uncolonized planet."

Lapis's eyes flicker understanding, and Drakken wipes a gallon of sweat from his brow.

"And then – you know what, I'm just going to read this part to you; it's so fantastic!" Drakken retrieves his well-worn Bible from a TV tray and thumbs through its dog-eared pages. "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, singing, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace, goodwill towards men.'"

Lapis shuts her eyes and wisps the smile that warms him more efficiently than hot cocoa.


	3. Stocking

"So – you hang up your _socks_?"

Lapis stares down at her bare feet. Gems' automatic temperature regulation has rendered socks unnecessary for her, and any socks of Drakken's surely couldn't be sizeable enough to hold anything of substance.

Drakken lets out a great bellowing laugh that reminds her of the horn on Greg's boat. "Not exactly. Not the type you wear." He takes off one soft black boot to display a sock that smells rather of oysters. She's trying to discern whether that's a good thing or not when he speaks again:

"Well, that's how the tradition got started, but now we use these special things called _stockings_. Their sole purpose is to be hung up on the mantelpiece on Christmas Eve – that's the night before – and then get stuffed _full_ of goodies!" His pitch barrels upward.

He rummages through his bin of silvery bows and colorful rolls of sheet paper and comes back holding an object. It's Ruby-colored and it _does_ resemble the boots Drakken's friend Shego wears, though this is much larger, with the word _Drakken_ smudged on in something bright blue and doughy, and with a mouth that could easily slip over Lapis's head. She sticks it on just to be sure.

"You should see them once Santa gets through with them," Drakken says, a shiver of delight in his voice.

Lapis pushes the stocking off her head to make sure she has heard correctly. "Santa who?"

"Santa Claus! He's something of a legend here on Earth. According to some, he flies around the world and visits each home at night; he lands his sleigh – pulled by flying reindeer, of course – on the roof and enters the home through the chimney. He eats the cookies and drinks the milk people lay out for him, and then he fills their stockings with presents." Drakken's timbre hushes to a whisper. "No one's ever seen him before, so we don't know if he's real or not."

Oh. Like how her people used to debate the existence of Gems that turned invisible when corrupted. And then came the War –

Lapis turns a cold wave on the thought and washes it away, focusing instead on Drakken as he continues, "If he is real, he does something no human being can do, but who knows? He might just be extraterrestrial."

She grins at him. She likes that word; it is exotic without being distancing.

"And so you'll need a stocking, too. I made this one myself!" Drakken shoves another, even redder, stocking Lapis's direction.

She wordlessly studies the intricate stitching, and Drakken's face goes pink, as it always does when his words don't fully match reality. "Well, I _personalized_ it myself," he amends.

Sure enough, _Lapis Lazuli_ has been printed in blocky letters, the same shade of blue and the same thick texture, and Lapis almost shivers at the care he must have taken to ensure the letters didn't twist and corrupt in his brain. She murmurs a "Thank you" that cannot be any louder than the ticking of his kitchen timepiece.

"You're welcome!" Drakken's entire face beams. "You hang it up on a hook, like so –"

He takes her fingers cautiously between his and guides them into the loop at the outer corner of the stocking's mouth. Together, they lift the stocking to a little golden beak of an object, hitched just above the fireplace, and slip it into place. It dangles there, her name rocking gently from side to side.

"Another part of the legend says Santa only brings gifts to good boys and girls," Drakken says, letting their fingers twine for another second before dropping his. "The bad ones get coal. But I've found over the years that Santa is very forgiving." He leans over and his hand comes out, as though he can catch the sinking feeling between Lapis's shoulder blades and repel it. "Believe me, Lapis, if he can forgive me – he can forgive _any_ one."

Lapis nods again, as much as she can with such a deluge in her mind. On Homeworld, gifts were rewards only. Even the Elite were only given what they had earned through fulfilling their Purpose. That humans hang enormous socks and are unsurprised when they are filled is almost more foreign a concept than their need to feed.

And yet it seems only fitting for a holiday that began with shepherds and kings bowing together over a bed of hay.

"What does Santa put in your stockings?" Lapis asks.

"Well, they have to be fairly small things," Drakken says. That's how it works on Earth, Lapis reminds herself. Containers are finite. "Small electronic things, jewelry sometimes, maybe some candy –"

"I do like candy," Lapis admits.

"– and a little toy, maybe. Like a Rubik's Cube."

"What's that?"

Drakken's eyes expand to complement the spread of his fingers. "It's a little six-sided cube. Each of the sides is a different color and consists of nine little blocks. Those blocks be can moved numerous directions in groups of three. Your objective is to…"

Lapis lets him chatter to himself; he sounds remarkably similar to the squirrels that scampered around the barn for several weeks in the fall, overjoyed to find one last nut before descending into hibernation. Her thoughts are elsewhere. With what will this Santa grace her on Christmas morning, should he even exist? She doesn't require any rich oils, doesn't care whether or not he offers her jewels or toys.

She already has just about everything she could possibly ask for. She is alive, unchained from Jasper. She has a family of her own – some here, some back in Beach City. She has a place to live, a place she is free to decorate with meatmorps of her choosing. Books to read. Crops to grow.

Fingerprints.


	4. Soul

"So….this redemption thing…is it just for humans?"

Drakken hauls in air so deeply he nearly inhales a strand of his own saliva. The question is asked with timidity, the kind characteristic of the Lapis he first met, and yet it has nearly clobbered the breath from his lungs.

"Well, I – I – I –" he postulates. Brilliantly.

Lapis folds her arms around her knees again. The delicate ridges of her elbows stand out as though she has forgotten to steel them. She whispers her next question: "Do I have a soul?"

Drakken is sure _his_ soul sneaks up his throat and chokes any response right out of him. He has the distinct sense that he isn't theologically qualified to answer such a thing, especially given how he can never remember if there are twelve commandments and ten apostles or the other way around.

But there is no pastor around, no one else to abandon the question to.

He can almost hear his Sunday school teacher, the one with the pinched-in nostrils and the skirted suit that sported nary a wrinkle, informing him sternly that _nothing that isn't human has a soul_. And perhaps she is right when it comes to potato bugs, but a creature like Lapis, who has free will and emotions and conflicted loyalties, is surely an entirely different schematic.

"I – I think so," Drakken says, already praying for forgiveness if he's on the wrong track. "I mean – you have a conscience, right? You have an awareness of your actions."

Boy, does she ever. For all that she is happy now, Drakken still doesn't think she's forgiven herself for the spiriting-away of the ocean, much less her time as Malachite.

The guilt is already weighing Lapis's head down again, he can tell. Drakken scoots closer and rolls his fingers back into his chest; a touch will only make things worse. "Like how you knew you didn't want to fight other Gems?" he ventures. "You knew it was wrong to harm each other. That comes from God, Lapis, even if you didn't know Him."

Lapis raises her head a quarter-inch and studies him through her bangs and the invisible force field in her eyes.

Drakken fingers the space at his chest where the medal would rest if he were wearing it and exhales. "I think anyone who's able to _care_ if they have a soul – I think they would automatically have a soul." He's quick to shrug. "But I don't really have the authority to. . . declare. . ."

Words disappear – not an uncommon event for Drakken – but any noises, mutant stumps of words, are also snuffed out, which _is_ indeed rare. Lapis is still watching him, and the shields have pulled down some. Bathed in multicolored lights, there is a surrender on her face, bare of the feistiness she has so bravely adopted over the last few months.

"Well," she says, softly as ever, "thanks for the input." The corners of her lips tip up, and her elbows relax, and gratitude radiates from her.

And while he is still no master theologian, Drakken can't help but wonder – _how could anyone so nice_ not _have a soul?_


	5. Tree

Christmas must be a very big deal to Dr. Drakken, because his house is brilliantly bedecked.

Drakken grunts as he hauls a large, white box up from his basement and tips it on its closed side onto the floor, collapsing on top of it. "Now," he says, "it's time to put the tree up."

Puzzlement divides Lapis's thoughts. She knows there are ways to bring a tree _down_ – something humans do a bit too much of, in her opinion – but are there also ways to bring it back up?

Drakken taps the box, his gloved finger coming away gray with dust. "It's in this box," he says.

Now that _is_ a puzzlement. How could a tree possibly survive an Earth-year in a dark box?

Drakken pries open the taped sides, and a tufted branch like the kind Lapis has seen on _Camp Pining Hearts_ slides out. And although Lapis doesn't go around touching trees often, when she fingers this strand, it seems far too rigidly cold to be natural.

"It's not a real tree," she states.

"Nope!" Drakken gives another endearing grunt as he pulls branches of the imitation tree apart. "It's called 'artificial.'"

"Like Peridot's limb enhancers?" Lapis asks.

"Yes!" Drakken says. "And there are a couple of really good reasons for choosing an artificial tree.

"First of all, it's less of a fire hazard, because it's not real wood or needles. Secondly, you don't have to get a new one every year, which is actually kind of a twofold….prong….thing: more cost-efficient and less wasteful. Although…" His eyes delight in the explanation. "Used natural trees don't go to complete waste. They're ground up to make wood chips that humans use for various other purposes."

Drakken fluffs another mimicking branch. "Nevertheless," he says, "I would be remiss if I didn't show you the real thing." He stands. "Follow me."

* * *

The two of them fly – he by hovercraft, she by wings – down to a Christmas tree _lot_ in a town called Lowerton.

The lot is rather dilapidated, with its sign sagging down from a raggedy board and its boundaries marked with posts that barely stand upright. But the trees themselves are glorious – stabbing upward in peaked cones, the same rich, earthy color as Shego's eyes. Lapis shapeshifts a pair of lungs in order to take the awestruck breath her chest is demanding.

For several ticks of Drakken's watch, he leads her across the lot, crunching wayward needles beneath his boots, pointing out which tree is the tallest, which is the stoutest, and which has the most charmingly crooked branches. Finally he comes to an array of trees standing in a circle in the back, and he dances in a circle of his own. "Yes!" he crows.

Drakken instructs Lapis to close her eyes. She does, and she feels his small, active hand take hers and lead her across the ground, duck her under a low-hanging branch, and then drop to her shoulders in excitement. "Okay – now take a deep breath – and smell!"

Lapis does this as well, and the scent breaks open in her nostrils. Every individual particle of the smell is subtle and cool and _alive_ – fresh plant life not yet milled from the dirt by technology.

"Oh," Lapis says. "It smells wonderful."

She opens her eyes just enough to see Drakken's grin, wider than the wings of that other Greg's airplane. " _That_ ," he announces, "is the smell of Christmas."

They are interrupted by the man who must be in charge of the lot, who appears chewing the tiniest and pointiest of all wood shavings. He shifts it around and says, his voice clipped in annoyance, "You guys gonna buy somethin' or what?"

Drakken opens his scowl to say something, but it's Lapis who speaks first. "No, we're just browsing. We don't have Christmas trees on my planet." She leans forward and entreats him to her sweetest, most disarming smile.

The man's gaze drags slowly to the left, far away from Lapis. His legs soon follow.

He doesn't bother them for the rest of their visit.

* * *

Back at Drakken's house, he is fluffing the last of the synthetic branches when Lapis's nose twitches with the familiar.

"Drakken," she says, "your tree still _smells_ like the real thing."

Drakken clasps his hands behind his back with pride. "Pine-scented air freshener," he says.


	6. Photo

If Lapis thought Drakken's place was magnificently decorated, his mother's home is even more so.

A circlet of greenery tied with a bow greets Lapis at the front door. Inside, what seems to be nearly every shelf is lined with figurines of a chubby man with a white beard – who Drakken whispers to her is this Santa Claus he told her about. Other decorations feature friendly-looking creatures constructed from two or three white orbs, which lumps of primitive charcoal forming eyes and an Earth-vegetable Lapis recognizes as a _carrot_ – they grew some at the barn this fall – for the nose.

Lapis is about to ask about that when her attention is caught and held by a red-and-white-striped candle on the mantle, burning with something that smells like the cough drops Steven received during his last illness, only slightly sweeter. Even the recesses of the rooms have Garnet-colored blankets and shining lights draped about them.

It may be the most beautiful aspect of humanity she's seen yet.

Lapis pauses for a moment beside the only decoration that doesn't make sense: a wooden microcosm of a scene, with figures, delicately carved and crudely painted, kneeling around and gazing at something. Then she spies the centerpiece – a baby in an animal feedbox, and while he appears much more content in his bed of hay than Lapis did in hers, wrapped in cloth and nestled in the straw, everything begins to burst into place like a precision-cut Emergence Hole. The sight of a shepherd with his familiar hooked staff is the final thrust it needs to open.

She looks up at Mama Lipsky. "Drakken told me this story," she says.

Celebration shines out from Mama Lipsky's eyes.

Shego greets Lapis with, "Lapis – whoa. Gotta tell ya, babe – that barefoot look is _so_ four months ago."

"You're just jealous that I can do it and my toes won't fall off," Lapis responds.

They smile at each other.

Lapis turns her puzzlement over to what is showing on the television set, two groups of men distinguished only by the different hues of their shirts – garish hues, and not in a pleasant way, numbers screened on the backs. She has seen what Steven calls "sports" on Peridot's old television, but this appears more of a fight, the men kicking one another and butting one another with their heads all over an oblong brown object. One man falls and rolls to his side, clutching his leg, face shut tight against pain.

"What's this?" Lapis asks. "I don't like it." Then it occurs to her that she might have just insulted someone's beloved sport, but she isn't sorry; she _doesn't_ like sports that remind her of arena combat.

"Football. And I don't really either," Drakken says, and reaches for the remote and clicks the television off.

It is not long before Mama Lipsky gathers Drakken and Shego to stand before her tree and sets up a three-legged gadget called a _tripod_ on which to rest her camera. The camera is as Lapis remembers machines on Homeworld before the War: round-cornered and just large enough to later be deemed impractical. Mama Lipsky sets the camera to take their picture in one minute and then rushes in to stand with her son and his friend.

Lapis remains politely to one side, so as not to intrude. Drakken's focus, though, is trapped looking off to the side, and those of the other two as well, as though they are waiting for something to happen.

After a moment, Shego lifts her hand and beckons to Lapis. "Get in here, cuteness."

Lapis understands then and zips to the front of the gathering beside Mama Lipsky in order not to be blocked by Shego's taller frame or Drakken's shoulders which, while not especially large, are certainly broader than anything on Lapis. She is warm, surrounded on all sides by humans who exude body heat, and a precious, cozy feeling rings through her gem.

"Now say 'cheese'!" Mama Lipsky says.

"Cheese?" Lapis says.

"She just means to smile!" Drakken says, through teeth that are already doing just that.

"Oh."

They all grin for the picture, Drakken the biggest of all. Lapis can't hope to rival his, but her mouth still stretches much farther than she can ever recall.


	7. Angel

Back at Drakken's house, he pulls out boxes of what are called _ornaments_ – some precise glass balls, others clumsily made of wooden sticks or paper that has been scribbled on. Lapis helps him hang them from their fragile strings on the tree. Her mind still partially resides back at Mama Lipsky's, where right after the family photo, she pulled Shego aside:

"Can you help me buy a gift for Dr. Drakken? I know what I want….but not where it is…and also I don't have any…money?" She wasn't even sure that's the right word.

Shego's mouth got an amused tic at the corners, but she said without sarcasm, "Yeah, we can probably make that work."

Lapis is shaken back to the present when Drakken proclaims, "And now for the very best part: the tree topper!"

The top of the tree _does_ look a tad bare, balding like Greg, though it at least has a single scraggy twig that Greg lacks. Lapis sits back on her heels. "What goes on top?"

Drakken has already scurried across the room and is opening yet another box. "We put an angel on top," he says.

Lapis forces back a gasp. "How do you catch one?"

Drakken chuckles the way he did when he was drinking Mama Lipsky's hot cocoa, but when his words emerge they are sober and serious. "Well," he says, "we use a pretend, plastic one, because the real ones are needed elsewhere."

"Oh." This makes sense to Lapis.

Drakken pulls the pretend angel from the box, and this time Lapis cannot contain the gasp.

She expected the angel to be as stately as the Diamonds, and while her robe does billow about her in splendor, her face is plain and unassuming, her great feathered wings tucked humbly at her sides, her bare feet peeking below the hem as though shy, as though she doubts she is worthy to deliver the news she carries.

It makes Lapis feel as if she can reach out and lightly touch the angel's strong nose without fear of her manifested flesh being smoldered off. The smooth veneer of it glides under her finger like a song.

"Beauty, isn't she?" Drakken says.

Lapis nods.

"Now to get her up on the tree." Drakken gently takes the angel from Lapis's hands and heads toward the tree. He stretches high onto the very tips of his toes, and then his quirky features wad in a pout. "Oh, balderdash! I forgot to get the stepladder! I can't reach the top without it!"

"Can I try?" Lapis asks, feeling rather as though she is requesting to help carry Blue Diamond's palanquin.

Drakken's eyebrow folds. "Well, that's very kind, Lapis, but you're not very tall, eith – oh!" His eyes catch up and sparkle. "You can fly it to the top. I getcha."

Her wings are so comfortable, heat-softened and relaxed, that it takes no effort at all to lift them from their curl inside her gem. Lapis lifts off and flits to the top of the tree, where she places the angel over the lone sprig, with more reverence with which she has handled anything since she last made an offering at the Sea Spire.

Lapis lands again, and there is the tree, half glittering sophistication and half sloppy reminders of what must have been Drakken's childhood. The angel sits at the top, slightly askew, perched, hardly able to remain still inside the importance of what she has been chosen to tell humanity.

"It's perfect," Drakken declares at Lapis's side.

 _No, it isn't_ , Lapis thinks. And that's the beauty of it.


	8. Mistletoe

Back at Mother's house, Drakken is watching, with one eye, _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer_ and with the other observing Lapis as she samples some of Mother's famed Christmas cookies. (Well, they _deserve_ to be famous if they aren't already.)

The pure-sugar cookies earn a nose-wrinkle from Lapis – they are too much for her. But the gingerbread widens her eyes and actually sends her tongue out to lick up the crumbs. It's so adorably unladylike, Drakken can't keep from grinning.

Lapis comes and sits on the arm of the chair beside him, a streak of flour on one cheek and a few flurries of it in her deep-blue hair. She turns to study the TV as the Island of Misfit toys each denote their own faults.

"We're all misfits!" cry the polka-dotted elephant and the train with square wheels and the Charlie-in-the-box. (As well as the doll that Drakken never saw a thing wrong with, to be honest.)

Lapis gives her head a sympathetic tilt. "Santa should just take them and deliver them all to Steven," she says knowingly. "He'd love them even _more_ than his regular toys."

"True," Drakken says. He remembers what Jasper said during their final showdown with her: that Steven took Gems that were defective, defeated, out of options and adopted them into his ragtag family. It was meant to be an insult – anything that comes from Jasper's lips seems an insult – but where would Lapis, or Peridot for that matter, be without Steven?

Maybe the same place Jasper is now.

It is a sad thought, not a very Christmassy one, and even when Drakken remembers Lapis standing her ground and lobbing a punch at Jasper's square granite chin, it doesn't entirely cheer him up. Lapis is stronger now, more grounded, and she will fight for herself and her friends if the occasion arises. And while he knows this is a needed, even positive, change, there is something hauntingly wistful about it, as though some part of her has grown up and been hacked off.

"Are you okay?" Lapis levels at him a gaze that still surprises Drakken with its sharpness. "Are you sad for the toys, too?"

Drakken nods, because it isn't _un_ true. He is sad for the toys, and he is beginning to choke up at the magnitude of his having a place to belong after all this time, a place he didn't have to burn to the ground and remake in his own image. And Lapis…

He's so glad he found her. So very glad to be part of her healing process. It takes his joy and expounds upon it like an arithmetic series, each day's amount added to the previous day's and then all the days' before that, until there is some grand, six-digit number and his heart is ready to explode.

Just now, Lapis tips a smile at him, one that has shed its shyness but retained its sweetness. When she does that, her mouth slides into a tilted line, her eyes brighten behind her bangs, and her limbs perk as though she's preparing for flight. There can scarcely be a more wonderful sight, especially in light of the shadows she lived under for too long.

And she still manages to care for others…

Drakken feels a floral tug at his neck and looks up, ready to impatiently shove the sprouted vine back in. His hand, however, freezes before it ever reaches the plant, for what blooms at the end isn't his usual cutesy flower but a clipping of _mistletoe_!

His face out-pinks the naked mole rat's. He can only pray Lapis doesn't notice –

"What's that?" someone asks. It's either Tinker Bell or Lapis.

She noticed.

"M-m-mistletoe," Drakken stammers, cursing himself for being such a poor liar and not claiming poison ivy or some such thing. "Traditionally used to…ward off werewolves."

There! That is also true.

Shego sniffs merrily from the direction of the loveseat – a word that deepens Drakken's blush. "Uh, no. That's not what it means for normal people."

Lapis's eyes are going from one of them to the other. Drakken can't tell what she'll believe, so he just snaps at Shego, "How dare you judge normalcy based on whether or not they're had the misfortune of encountering werewolves?"

Shego doesn't take the bait. She turns to Lapis and says, "Yeah, traditionally, when two people get caught under the mistletoe – they have to kiss. And his flowers know he wants it."

"If…that's…okay…" Drakken mutters. His arms suddenly feel much too long, and they dangle at his sides like two limp fishing rods.

The flour on Lapis's cheek pops as her skin turns a darker blue beneath it. "It's okay with _me_."

Shego looks like a tiger who's successfully cornered her next meal. "Go on, Doc, pucker up. You owe her one."

Drakken swallows, runs his tongue across his incisors to be sure no cookie-scraps are caught in them, wipes his palms on the back of his pants, heart beating a reveille the entire time. With slowness and dread and curiosity and hope, he inches his arms around Lapis – they _are_ too long; they can encircle her multiple times – and then he is consumed with attempting to hold them there without touching the teardrop life-force on her back. He cannot bump it, cannot do her harm.

Shego's snickering is the only sound.

Closing his eyes seems the thing to do, so Drakken does. He thinks he remembers seeing that in the movies, anyway. With no help from his vision, he leans down and taps his lips against something soft and feathery – it might be Lapis's cheek, or he might have just snagged part of her hair.

Drakken pulls back immediately and opens his eyes. Lapis's are about eight inches below his, and they are windows to all the galaxies she's ever visited, everything she's ever loved. With the darker-blue patches still there, she wisps another smile at him.

A nervous noise leaks from Drakken. "I might not have done that right," he says.

Lapis snorts a faint giggle. "How would I know?"

She gives him a one-armed hug, while Drakken attempts to rein in his vital signs. They are exhilarated from the guess-work and wish to return immediately to the Land of Scientific Law, from this place that teenagers make appear so frivolous.

So this is what it's like to be in love, huh?


	9. Snow

**~Gaaah! Can we just pretend this one went up last night instead of this afternoon? ;)~**

Lapis looks up from the sixth _Pretty Hairstylist_ book – the one Peridot shoved into her hand when Lapis left for Middleton, saying, "Here, this is the one you're ready for next" – and flits a look over at the lowest branches of Mama Lipsky's tree. Drakken's present, in its small, green-striped bag, is tucked with serenity beneath them, awaiting the gift-giving ceremony.

"I'll pay you back," Lapis promised as Shego counted out a few of the green papers with the portraits of historic men on them.

Shego snorted. "How? Does Steven give you an allowance or something?"

"We have corn now," Lapis said. "Would you accept corn?"

"Ya know what?" Shego said, laying the papers flat in Lapis's palm and curling Lapis's fingers around them with her own. "Just consider this _my_ Christmas present to _you_. Don't expect anything else from me."

A paper tag slides up and down the bag's strings, a infinitesimal moon drawn into its orbit, stamped with the words _TO_ and _FROM_. Under Shego's advisement, Lapis has printed "Dr. Drakken" alongside the first and "Lapis Lazuli" alongside the second.

It is the first time in her considerable lifespan that she has signed her name without the blue diamond insignia following it.

Shego sits in a chair, holding a small computer called a _laptop_ , like the one Steven's friend Connie has. Mama Lipsky bustles from oven to pantry and back again, humming to herself, having sent Drakken –whose vague boom Lapis can still hear through the shut window, prattling away to the chill and the dappled overhang of grayish clouds – outside to complete his potentially messy science experiment.

Even now, he cries, "Lapis! Come see!"

It is the toll of a bell, not the roar of a tidal wave, a toll that announces something marvelous has happened. Lapis skips toward the door, but Mama Lipsky gets there first, her finger wagging. Despite Lapis's protestations – despite the fact that Gems have an automated body temperature and cannot freeze or overheat – Mama Lipsky insists on dressing Lapis in complete winter garb: a coat like Steven's, though not puffed out to quite the same volume; fat hand-sacks that she calls _mittens_ ; boots that are immune to water; a long cord of fabric around Lapis's neck. All are some shade of purple and rather short on Lapis, though baggy in terms of breadth.

Finally, Lapis is allowed to leave. As she exits the front door, Drakken turns to look at her with that comical, faraway smile, swimming in possibilities, free and full. "What is it?" Lapis calls as she hurries over to him in her wide-mouthed boots.

"Up there!" Drakken points, jumping up and down, his own boots tramping the driveway. "Look!"

Small, off-white flakes are drifting down from the clouded sky in no discernible pattern. "Is that ash?" Lapis shivers, trying not to picture the green ship resounding with alarms, the brutal twist of the metal ceiling as it collapsed on top of her…

"Huh? Eh? No – it's _snow_!" Drakken bounds up on his heels; he stumbles and must cling to a post for support. "Frozen crystals of water."

Of course. Lapis has never heard of snow, but from within the heart of her gem, she can feel the compliant water.

"Did you make this happen?" she says.

"I wish! But no. This just happens sometimes when the temperature drops below the freezing point of water. My experiment was to see what happens if you combine baking soda and vinegar and then freeze them before they have time to react. But my vinegar bottle froze and shattered before I could find out." Drakken gestures to a few pieces of brittle, broken plastic that smell like the hot springs on Kindergarten Base 14.

"Stick out your tongue," he instructs. "Try to catch one!"

Lapis does. The tastebuds she shapeshifts turn out to be unnecessary: the speck that hits her tongue has none of the flavor of ice cream, though it does have its temperature, which dissolves and coats her tongue in glossy cool.

She squeals, though she knows it's foolish to be surprised. "It's cold!"

"Wonderful, isn't it?" Drakken rocks his hands from side to side. "There are all _kinds_ of things you can do with snow! You can build snowmen. That's when you pile up big balls of snow so that it looks like a body and a head, and then make a face with buttons and such," he explains at Lapis's puzzled look.

"Oh," Lapis says. "Like the statues Mama Lipsky has."

"Exactly! And you can make snow angels!"

Lapis frowns. "For the top of the tree? Won't they melt?"

"No, snow angels aren't for anything except fun. You lie down in the snow on your back and flap your arms and legs back and forth until you make a pattern that looks like an angel's wings. The hardest part is standing up without leaving a big footprint in the middle of the angel.

"And you can have snowball _fights_."

Lapis cringes. She is willing to fight now, should she need to, but she still does not like the clamping sound of the word.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Drakken says, as though he has understood. "You just wad up really small snowballs and throw them at other people. I've had myself a good snowball fight or two in the past."

Lapis glances at the few speckles of white on the driveway. "You'd need a _lot_ more snow to do any of that," she observes.

"Oh, yes, and we get some! Sometimes it doesn't happen much on the coasts – you know, where the oceans are – but here in the Midwest, we have huge snowstorms all the time called blizzards. And even when they end, there's snow _everywhere_." Drakken spreads his arms wide to illustrate. "It makes it a little hard to drive on the roads sometimes, which a lot of people don't like. Of course, I don't have that problem with the hovercraft and all. You know, come to think of it, I _did_ make it snow once. There was this weather machine I stole to attack Canada. . ."

He continues to speak, and while Lapis continues to listen, her regard is on the tiny swirls spiraling down from the leaden sky. One white pinprick lands on her mitten, melting instantly; she groups her powers and re-freezes it long enough to look at its six intricate points.

Drakken is beside her now, his breath warm, his voice thundering with excitement. "Did you know no two snowflakes are exactly the same?"

Lapis laughs as she releases the flake to the whims of the air. "Just like fingerprints."


	10. Gifts

**~Same with this one? We'll pretend it went up yesterday? I'll try to get another one posted tonight to get us back on track.~**

Dr. Drakken is so excited, he can hardly stand it.

He certainly can't _sit_. His backside rejects every surface as though it is made of hot coals, and he bounces from foot to foot as Lapis settles herself with stunning calm beside the tree skirt, her own skirt coming to a rest around her small, impish body, which matches the smile she mails him.

"You can go first," she says knowingly.

 _Bless her_. Drakken scrambles to the left side of the tree and retrieves his package, with the wrapping paper that somehow came out crinkled and torn even with the care he took in taping it and the ribbon that didn't quite tie into a symmetrical bow the way they always do on Christmas commercials. He sends it across the floor toward Lapis, suddenly feeling shy. "Here," he says.

This is a new one for him – more anticipation for the present he gives.

Lapis blinks at the box. When she smiles this time, it is dripping with politeness and scrambling for sincerity. "Um, it's a very nice box," she says. "What do you expect me to do with it? Should I put stuff in it?"

Ohhhhh. She thinks that this is – and it's clearly not what she wants – and she's still trying….

Drakken finds himself down on the knotty carpet, spasming with laughter, the stitch in his side throbbing like a paper cut. He cannot get it together enough to explain to her and is grateful when Shego jumps in with, "Your present is _in_ the box, Lapis."

"Yes, indeed!" Drakken lifts himself from the floor and wipes some hysteria-induced wetness from his eyes. "I put the present in a box and wrapped the box up so the present would be a surprise!"

"Oh." Lapis glances at Shego. The giggle begins, the one that would sound almost too dainty for this world were it not for the underlying snort. "Like how we put his in a bag?"

Shego nods, the corners of her mouth scooting up.

Drakken's knees wriggle under him, rendering his crawl across to Lapis perilous. "And now, you get to _un_ wrap it!"

Lapis is far ahead of him. She turns the box over, finds the taped seam of the paper, and methodically separates it until Drakken's sure he's ground his dental enamel into powder.

"You can rip it, you know," he says. "It doesn't have to be neat!"

Lapis does pull the last few hunks of paper away more roughly – not anything that can qualify as a rip. That she saves for the box itself, whose second layer of tape she breaks through as though it is as flimsy as the Styrofoam peanuts that she picks up, examines briefly, and then tosses back over her shoulders when Drakken assures her they are not her present either.

Out tumbles a tall, thick candle. Lapis stares at it, blinking.

"It's a candle," she says.

"No, doy," Shego mutters. Lapis shows her tongue to her.

"Open it!" Drakken's hands begin to bounce between his thighs like he's having a seizure. "Smell it! It's vanilla!"

Lapis pops the lid off the top and bends down to sniff the candle. Her eyes close for a long moment and when they reopen, they gaze back at him from a safe pouch of a place. "It smells like the day we first met," she says.

In spite of the chill that has forced him to wear a woolen sweater over his lab coat and matching socks, it is the first day of spring inside Drakken.

Lapis nearly buries her nose in the wick and inhales the scent again. On her exhale comes a "Thank you."

Drakken nods, not trusting himself to speak.

"Now open yours." Lapis pushes the aforementioned bag toward him and wraps her arms around her still-bare knees.

Oh, goody! Drakken plucks some tissue paper from the bag and bumps his grip around in it until it resurfaces holding a small robotic bird, a metal miniaturization of the real thing, its beak a steely silver, very similar to one he dallied with at the toy store on their _second_ meeting.

"Oh, Lapis," Drakken says. His throat chokes. "This is… this is… _tech_."

Lapis's shrug is entirely too careless. "I thought you'd like it. I thought about getting you the robot-wolf, but I know you already have Commodore Puddles, and I thought he might be jealous."

He interrupts her with a hug. The rudeness and the kindness surely must cancel each other out.


	11. Asleep

Lapis stops by Dr. Drakken's house after he flies home for the night. She wants to see the blue circles again and the multicolored bulbs strewn everywhere.

The house is apparently cold, because Drakken nestles under a wide blanket embroidered with pictures of what Lapis now recognizes as _snowmen_. He brings his shoulders together and rubs his arms, and then he leans against her.

She is comfortable and warm already.

"I wonder if maybe we shouldn't have opened our presents early," Drakken says worriedly.

Lapis feels the hollows of her insides flinch. "Is it forbidden?" She wouldn't want to be accused of violating an Earth custom on her first Christmas.

"Not by law," Drakken says. He shifts under the blanket and lets out an elaborate yawn. "Just…if you open too many too early, you might not have anything left for the big day."

 _The big day_ , Lapis assumes, is Christmas itself. It arrives in only two days, time that Lapis knows is lagging for Drakken. She feels sorry for him, but she can't empathize.

Two days is a firefly's flicker.

"Ah, well, don't worry," Drakken says, and Lapis isn't sure if he speaks to her or himself. "Mother will have plenty of other presents wrapped up and waiting for the both of us."

Lapis nods, her toes curled up under her insteps. Homeworld also used to have a festival marking the end of their solar year, though never one as fanciful as this. The Pearls did not get the day off, for one thing, and while there was dancing, the crux of it was to praise the Diamonds for their wisdom and thank them for the Gems' prosperity.

Looking back on it is like looking at a tree struck by lightning: a blackened, charred, twisted remnant of beauty.

"Are you excited?" Drakken says. His voice has the warbling quality that an archaic Gem ship takes on as it is powering down. His eyelids, too, seem to be sagging under Earth's limiting gravity.

"I…I _am_ ," Lapis answers honestly. "It's been awhile since I got the chance to be excited, and that's probably half of it right there. I'm so glad I –"

A sawing noise cuts her words short. Lapis looks down to find Drakken's head reclining against her arm, its pressure heavier than it looks, his lips parted open and huffs buzzing from his nostrils. For a moment she is concerned, then confused. Then she understands.

He's asleep.

He has been so excited all day that he finally wore down his supply of energy.

Lapis feels her face soften in the low light. Gently, she backs away from Drakken, cradling his head in her hands so it won't hit the floor; she was Taught that human skulls vary in durability. She lowers him and watches his body go into a childlike curl.

And for a moment, she watches him. It is only the third or fourth sleep she has witnessed.

Drakken's long, curled eyelashes splay across the smudged skin beneath them. His cheeks pucker with sawed-off breaths, buckling the scar against the pastel blue. He grunts in his sleep, waves his hand at some object known only to him, his nose almost lost in his eyebrow as it lowers pensively. And yet there is still that smile, flashing and fading only to flash again.

Steven uses a pillow when he sleeps. Lapis retrieves a chubby one from the couch and prods it under Drakken's neck, bramble strands of his hair tickling her fingers. He already has a blanket, so she simply readjusts it around his inert form.

Something, however, is still missing.

Lapis looks at Drakken's favorite chair, where his teddy bear and hers are propped up together, holding hands, his with a constant pout and hers with a tentative hope. She scoops up Drakken's bear and secures it in the lanky wild swing of one arm.

In her head, Lapis wishes him a good rest and no nightmares. She gathers Plastic into her arms and departs for Mama Lipsky's.

The next morning, when Lapis arrives to collect him, she spies a neighbor woman struggling to push her car through the snow. She's cleared both sides but a pile of creamy snow remains at the base of the driveway, refusing to budge as the car's back end taps it again and again.

Lapis pokes Drakken. "Do you like that neighbor?" she whispers. Even through the car's front glass, she can see the woman wearing a scowl.

"Yes," Drakken says. "She's pretty nice."

"Okay." Lapis raises her hands and inundates her head with thoughts of warmth and fluidity. Within seconds, the snow has dwindled to a puddle through which the car easily splashes. The woman cranes her neck in disbelief, and Lapis grabs Drakken's arm – his jaw has dropped to a depth that still amazes her – and spirits him away behind his house.

Now they have a Christmas secret together.


	12. Angel (Reprise)

**~Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! Happy first night of Hanukkah, as well.~**

"Christmas! Is! Tomorrow!" Drakken knee-bounces on his mother's sofa, one bounce for each word. "Santa! Comes! Tonight!"

And then mere prose is simply not enough to express the fireworks going off in his veins, so Drakken bursts into song:

 _"Here come Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane, Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer pulling on the reins! Bells are ringing, children singing, all is merry and bright! Hang your stockings and say your prayers, 'cause Santa Claus comes tonight!"_

Lapis giggles from her position by the window, where she is pressed with Plastic Lazuli at her side. Neither of them requires a respiratory system, so there isn't so much as a circle of frost on the glass. "Do you think he'll still come," she says, "even if I don't sleep?"

In any of the preceding eleven months, such a quandary would have rocked Drakken to his core. Now he nods his head, ponytail snapping, and reassures her, "I'm quite sure he will. Santa's been around a while, and he knows a few tricks! He'll find a way to sneak in past you."

"How comforting," Lapis says. It is dry, the way Shego's sentences often are, and the irony of it in her little fairy voice is nothing short of delightful.

She returns her attention to the window. "I think I like the lights across the street best," she says. "Some of the others are too bright, like they're trying too hard. These have purple and blue, and it looks beautiful." Drakken watches the line of her back dip inward as she sighs. "They remind me of my old home – before the lights turned cold."

Drakken comes up behind Lapis and offers his hand with no small amount of awkwardness. It is hard to know when she needs his touch and when she needs his reassurance and when she just needs his companionship. Lapis, at least, is not the type to pelt him with her powers if he gets it wrong.

"I'm…glad," Drakken says cautiously. "Is that what I'm supposed to be? Does 'glad' work?"

He is committed to not breaking the festive mood, but he is equally determined never to squelch Lapis's feelings; she does enough of that on her own. His love for her is bulky and bumbling, inexperienced.

"Yeah," Lapis says. "Glad is good."

"You can see the stars tonight, too," Drakken volunteers. It is risky; the stars remind her of her old home too, and sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes not. And though he does not fear her wrath, he dreads bruising her recovering feelings.

"I know. I was trying to figure out if I ever saw that star two thousand years ago," Lapis continues. "You think it'd be hard to forget, but I saw a _lot_ of stars." The giggle makes a reappearance, not quite as silvery-bright as he first remembers it, more scratchy with a seasoning he never wished on her. "And sort of lost track of time."

Drakken thinks of her – literally hammered by that rapscallion Bismuth, stuffed into that mirror through unnatural physics, alone and unspoken-to until Steven brought compassion to her life – and it fizzes around the Christmas feeling like the old baking-soda-and-vinegar combo. "Lapis, I wish –"

Lapis slips one hand through his and the other through Plastic's. "You've done a lot," she says. "You don't even _know_."

The robot bird pales in comparison. Even if you can program it to sing back to you in your own voice.

Lapis settles herself in front of Mother's Christmas tree, one knee hunched and guarded, the other sprawled flat. She is, as the song says about Mary, so strong yet so frail. Her eyes don't tear up, but they are glassy as they travel toward the top, lights of every color winking in them. Her lips move without sound, tasting words. At first they look like _peas and furs_ , _landfill to win_ , because Drakken is no lip reader –

But of course she is not talking about peas and landfills. Unless he's horribly mistaken, she's silently murmuring, _"Peace on Earth; goodwill to men."_

He might have caught an angel after all.

Instantly, Drakken scolds himself for the thought. It's terribly unoriginal, even cliché: surely every man who's ever lived has described the woman he loves as an angel.

But how many of them have wings?


End file.
